As far as I'm aware the Church has always acknowledged two forms of "tongues", the second, which you say your friends parents have has several caviets attached to it.
It is the least of the gifts, and should never be used in public unless there is someone to interprete (in other words your friends parents are a good example of its use).
If you've read objections to it, it is probably to the evangelicals who go around speaking in tongues and hold it as evidence that one is blessed by God. However under the pressure these groups use it is quite easy to spew forth gibberish and convince yourself it is from God.
Thank you for the response! If this is the case, this certainly helps me to understand the issue better. Most of the objections I have read to it are actually objections to its existence altogether. For example, from Elder Cleopa of Romania:
"It is totally out of the question for speaking in tongues, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, to mean a delirium in a non-existent and incomprehensible language, for then it wouldn’t be speaking in languages, but our own [exclusive] language (Mk. 16:17). Moreover, it comes into clear contradiction with chapter two of the Acts of the Apostles."
and
"The inarticulate voices, lunacies and incoherent utterances which we often hear from the self-proclaimed speakers of tongues very much resembles the scenes the idol-worshippers would make before their idols of Dionysus, as well as with quite a few of the Montanists, Gnostics, Quakers, and later Pentecostals, all of whom the true Church of Christ anathematizes"
Regardless of this, it would certainly seem more harmonious in my mind if the Church did, in fact, acknowledge the existence of this second type of speaking in tongues.
Edit:
From the quotations I posted, Elder Cleopa is, in fact, denouncing the Pentecostal and other charismatic movements. However, the point I was trying to make with those quotations is that Elder Cleopa is denouncing their existence as actual gifts of the Spirit altogether.
